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Important numbers - marketing idea

09-08-2008, 06:57 AM

Here is an idea to make sure your magnet sticks around.

Get a list of local important numbers in the area.
Town numbers like the mayor, police, library, water and sewer dept. You can find most of these on your towns websites.
Then list other numbers like local pizzerias, sub shops, and others.

Maybe get a local electrician, plumber, carpenter, roofer etc. They could potentially help you buy some of these magnets and hand them out themselves as well, to help offset the costs.

Then have a section for lawn care and list only your phone number.

Stick these on doors in your area and be sure that your number will stick around for quite some time.

You could also have different discounts for services through out the year.

Comment

I would not include anybody that didn't participate in paying for the printing costs. However I would definitely include local municipalities like police, hospital, poison control etc. to keep the value beyond some lawn service with a large business card.

I am really, really impressed with this idea. The best part? If you include enough brick and mortar businesses, they will hand them out for you. Of course you could hand them out door to door but it wouldn't be completely necessary.

I am so thrilled about this I am going to start this today. Thank you Steve!

Comment

OK. I had a rain day today and when I saw this thing I knew right away it is something I wanted to do and do right away. Except rather than Steve's original idea, I actually thought of a two fold money maker.

1. Put something together with just me under lawn care as suggested above.

2. Sell ads on this refrigerator magnet. My thoughts are selling them just like the place-mat ads except this is something that goes home and becomes a permanent part of the kitchen. It has emergency numbers on it, the main reason to pick one up and take it home. See picture. The idea is this. I sell ads to whomever wants in. I create or add them to a category on the magnet. They could be the only one or with several other businesses in the same category - like pizza places - there are tons of them around here. They will pay for the one-liner just like the yellow pages. Bold and extra lines would be extra $$. If they want the exclusive, that would be at a premium price. I would sell ads until the space is full - just like a place-mat.

My plan is to decide how much I want to make per run. I have something in mind right now but I don't think i will share these ideas. I will keep selling ads until it's full and to any type of business that wants to participate.

Distribution is this. All brick and mortar locations will get the magnets to place on their counters until everyone that wants one, takes one home. The positive is they are advertising to folks that are already familiar with their services, but because these are located at other establishments, they can benefit from their customers also. How awesome is that? No need for me to distribute by the piece.

I will commit to a certain number of prints and distribute them to businesses based on traffic. Below is an example I came up with that is shown on a 8.5 x 11 sheet but it is sized to the size I have researched for the actual product. I will see if the company will send me an example to show to potential customers, or maybe they can send me one with my own artwork as an example. Of course once I get the first print done, I can then use one of those as an example. I may even low-ball my first small run and get the closest local businesses on board and get a kick off started and see what pitfalls arise, and work out any kinks.

So how do I continue to make money? Two ways. First of all these are all local based businesses. And just like all of you I have many boroughs, and towns, cities near me. I could literately keep selling these until I sold 3-4 runs in each town and never repeat the same business twice. I hate to say it but I think this is going to blow up huge. The second way to make money is the same premise as the yellow book. They do one every year. It's not like they made one book and said, "well boys, what do we do now?". Keep selling to those that want on and I can assure you that once other company reps see your product out there being picked up by other customers, they will almost beg to be apart of it. Especially if their competition is on there.

I could sell ads in even bigger areas near me. I feel this idea is so incredible and that taking it just a step further can turn this into something outrageous. Oh and letting you in on it is no problem either. There are so many towns & cities across this crazy planet that the chance that you step on my area would be nearly impossible. And even if there were two of us here, there are so many areas and businesses, there is enough to go around.

I'm really excited about this. Thank you Steve for yet another brilliant idea. The only thing I am thinking about ahead of time is that some businesses may want their town or location listed so they get calls from the folks in their area. But we'll see. I am working the next few days so I won't be able to get started canvasing this but I can assure you, if I were free tomorrow, I would knocking doors and talking to business owners and managers. So in the meantime I will show this to a few business friends of mine, see what they think and more importantly see if they want to participate.

Comment

You know if you could get it working in your area, you could potentially do this in other areas you don't even offer lawn care service for. It could be a great winter money maker and you could keep charging more and printing more as needed.

Comment

Absolutely. I went into this at first thinking that I would get my name out there and let others pay for it and maybe even make a few bucks from the proceeds.

Then I started crunching the numbers and wow. I knew this could be a big hit not to mention quite profitable. So next my thoughts went to Syracuse which is a really big area and 45 mins to an hour away at 65 mph. This is way too far for me to do lawn care but defiantly not too far to sell ads.

So I am curious of what your thoughts are to all of this? What about the example? Do you think it would be something you - yourself would do?

I happen to know that the people that sell place mats around here don't print them at all. They just sell. In fact I never placed an ad with them because I never trusted them to print (or have printed) the amounts they said they would. Let's face it their only cost is the actual printing and the gas to get you to give them money. Anyway that was my experience with them and I always felt that $350 was too expensive for very little assurance that my ad would make it on front of potential customers. See the restaurants that got them, got them for free so they never cared what was on them, who bought what, or how many they got. So the people selling them would resell them over and over and do lots of short runs. I'd say there would be maybe 20 ads on a place mat, multiply that by $350 and they took in $7000 and promised to print 3000 or whatever then they would have 500 printed and then move to the next 20 ads. Around and around they would go until they were in your face again. How would you know? I never advertised on anything that wasn't tangible. At least something measurable. Some people might look at them while they wait for food but your business would soon be forgotten when the food arrived and you certainly never walk out with a place mat to take home.

Comment

I sold 7 out of 9 people ads today on this idea. I had to stop because I had to be somewhere but you bet your *ss I will be out again tomorrow. I'm actually disappointed that I made an appointment to do some clean-up tomorrow because this by far exceeds any amount I will make doing that. I will do it later in the day.

I am not quiting lawns just yet **** but I will tell you this. I made more today (gross and net) than I could make mowing all day. And I only had 4 hours to do it and I spent less than 15 minutes with each person.

I am truly blown away right now and anxious to get going tomorrow. I just knew it.

Comment

Well Steve, those are pretty good questions because truth be told, I did happen to know all those people, except one. See I owned a business in town and these folks were all customers of mine.

I know that owning a brick and motor business - every jerk near and far wants your money. They will try and convince you that what they have is the best thing since sliced bread - but really, you know your business better than anybody else. So when they were selling, I wasn't buying 99% of it.

This is a smaller rural area I believe my ratios will change once I get out in the big world and here's what predict. Because this is a more rural area, many owners and people that can make the decisions are actually there. They feel very strongly about community loyalty because they live it everyday. They recognize their customer and many of them by names. Those points were positives for my success today (that and they did know me).

What's going to change is the fact that there will be less owners and decision makers available to speak to me. Leaving material behind is way less effective, no matter what it says even if it's written in blood or gold. However there will be more businesses to talk to. Some have corporate offices that will require me to go to or make appointments with.

But in summary I believe that with less owners/decision makers but with more businesses I will have more foot work but I will still make out better. I believe that based on how easy many handed over their hard earned money, they believe this is a bargain. Like I was saying, once i get the first run out of the way, I will raise prices and adjust them most likely weekly until it's just so. I'll know when I'm getting close.

One thing I do is I go in and say I wont take much time, and I stick to it. I also tell them I take no for an answer because they better understand whats best for them than I do. This puts their defenses down and allows them to make a more informed decision. For me, I usually knew I didn't want it before they even got started.

I also feel that once somebody gives me indication they are not interested, like "geez my budget etc." I am starting to say my good-byes. My time standing there is wasted if they aren't buying. (like driving to a lawn and not mowing it)

Once this product starts showing up around town, next time they will be all over it. Oh I should point out that I said to many of them "you've seen these before right?" They all but one said yes. One guy said yes all over the place. ha ha.

As far as something tangible, I only have an example on paper. Another reason to keep the price lower for now. I have some samples on the way as I write this. What will be better is one of my actual printed magnets to show for next time. I will build up a cache as time goes on. I will frame the first one (that or put it on my fridge).

As far as proposing, I explain the product and why people will put it on their fridge. And more importantly, why they will take it home. It's free. I said to a few, "I have no real study on this but my guess is that if I didn't print a new version each year or two, this magnet will remain on a persons fridge for many, many years to come." They all agreed.

Stealing a part of this line from elsewhere, I have on the top of my price sheet "Advertising that sticks around". Now I am going to put together my attack route, so I am not so willy-nilly like I was today.

Thanks Steve for this idea!

Comment

those are pretty good questions because truth be told, I did happen to know all those people, except one.

This is so fascinating. This just goes to show how important it is to be known before you even set foot into a facility to try and make a sale. The same thing you are able to do with these calendars could be recreated with your lawn care service sales if your potential customers knew of you before hand.

I am convinced the more you are known the better you can sell what ever it is you are trying to sell. When all things are equal, people buy from people they know, first.

So I think this is a great learning lesson for us all about the importance of reaching out to those we want to sell too. Doing community volunteer projects. Helping neighbors. Developing positive word of mouth and good will within your community will help you so much in the long run.

Comment

Update. Yesterday everybody said no. I got one sale and it was a cold-call I didn't know. I felt a little beat up from it all.

Today another victory. I am ready to go to print. I might be able to squeeze a few more.

Problems I have discovered. Even at 5x7 I ran out room quickly. I am going to have to raise prices quite a bit to get the number of pieces that some want to see. I could keep prices lower if I could fit more names on the magnet. But then the magnet gets more expensive and too big for the fridge. I will have to leave off the little avatars to really get more numbers on.

Well, that's it. I may report whats going on later but I will be shutting up a little more about this since it is not lawn related.

Oh I have to say that my success today was from learning from a friend who had a few selling tools that really worked. And today was the biggest day I've had yet.

In case anybody was wondering, I am start up with the lawns and I mow 2 days a week on my own and occasionally with a couple guys and that is why I have time for this.

Comment

First my approach was wrong. I always hated sales people, so to be sure that I wasn't high-pressure, I was saying to everyone that it was OK with me if they didn't want it. He said NO! He said they have to! Their crazy not to! The world is coming to an end if they don't participate! You get the point and he's right, the product is really creative and valuable.

And this one floored me. I'm still a little in awe about it. Here is the suggestion. Before I go into an area, know who I will be visiting, put these businesses on the example that I show (paper). "What?! That's brilliant!!!!" So I immediately thought what it meant to me and my product: This little nugget works two-fold (you'll love this). First they see all these other businesses they recognize already on there (you don't offer that you haven't secured them just yet). They will immediately see the value and will not want to be left out or missed. Secondly, they see themselves on it already. How would you feel if I said, "it's OK I can take you off". Ha ha! So the effort involved in this? Minimal really, edit them daily after you get home. This also allows me to have a current running version and know exactly where I stand for filling it up. So what happens if I visit a business that isn't a planned stop? No problem, you say you have 1-2 spots left and one actually says "still available" and the other you are following up on later today. This is their chance to be apart of a very exciting opportunity and their chance is passing by quickly - they had better hurry.

Isn't that brilliant?!!! It pulled me out of the funk of not selling yesterday. I was so anxious to get started today I awoke at 6:30 and started planning my day and had the best one yet!

I have one spot left. I mow the next two and will use the weekend to make plans for the new magnet and area. I knew it! I knew it!